Goldengirl

He didn’t want to queer the old lady’s pitch with Hardaker, but this chance wouldn’t come again. ‘You said a few minutes ago you’d had some scares since the adoption. What exactly did you mean, Mrs. Van Horn?’

Hardaker almost threw up his hand. ‘That isn’t a question Mrs. Van Horn can answer.’

‘Why not?’ queried Mrs. Van Horn.

‘Lavinia, I urge you to take care. We don’t know Mr. Hofmann. You might regret—’

‘You won’t gag me, Charles,’ Mrs. Van Horn said firmly. ‘Mr. Hofmann is a fine young man, can’t you see that? He’s the cousin of the child’s mother. He wants to help Dean if he can. For Lord’s sake, let’s be candid with him.’

‘Against my advice, remember,’ Hardaker said, his face the colour of the poinsettias at the window.

‘Drink your tea, Charles, and don’t fuss. Yes, Mr. Hofmann, I got a little distressed about two years back, when a man telephoned saying he was a newsman doing an article on children’s homes. That didn’t scare me at all, but when he got here, all he wanted to know about was Dean, and I could tell he was no reporter, because he didn’t write a thing down. The questions frightened me. He was very abrupt. I could only suppose he was from the police, or something, and that they had turned up something awful on Dr. Serafin. Darn it, I wasn’t going to say his name. Don’t look at me with that death’s-head expression, Charles.’

‘What was this man like?’ asked Dryden.

‘A little older than you. Short. A small man, but forceful. What’s the word they use? Machismo. Yes, he had machismo, all right. And he was a smart dresser. Do you have some idea who it was?’

‘I don’t know. Was he dark?’

‘Swarthy, I’d say. He didn’t have much hair, though. Oh, but he had two beautiful rings. Rubies, they were.’

Gino Valenti. Two years back. The time the consortium was being formed. Trust Valenti to make his own check on Serafin’s story.

‘He was no cop, anyway,’ said Dryden. ‘They don’t wear rings like that. And you told him what you’ve just told me?’

‘If I recall it correctly, yes,’ said Mrs. Van Horn. ‘He was very insistent, you see, and I didn’t have Charles here that time to speak for me.’ She gave Hardaker a warm glance. ‘It worried me for a long time after. That was when I had the swing moved out. I was getting this recurrent dream that Dr. Serafin had neglected the child until she died and then dissected her and kept her limbs in bottles of Formalin. It was very scary. If you find her, Mr. Hofmann, I’d like to know that she’s all right. Would you let me know?’

Twelve

Toward the end of Tuesday morning Dryden picked up a felt-tip pen and started listing potential merchandising outlets for Goldengirl. It took an effort to make a start; up to now he had brushed aside the detail, but it couldn’t be shirked any longer. From July, he was giving the pitch, not Serafin. And without the backup of a film and a family saga dating back to pre-war Germany. A campaign had to be prepared, if only in outline.

On paper, it was no trouble. The market possibilities were limitless. Earlier, he had looked up the press clippings on the merchandising Norman Brokaw had set up for Mark Spitz in 1973. His recollection had been right; by May of that year the potential value of Spitz’s endorsements already under contract was reckoned at $5,000,000. He had been featured in every major magazine from Life to Stern, and made TV specials with Bob Hope, Bill Cosby and Sonny and Cher. His poster had sold more than any since Betty Grable’s, and he was pulling down $12,500 for every public appearance. It was good to read. Scale the whole thing up for inflation, the stepup in endorsement advertising and the built-in bonus for a gorgeous blonde, and there was no reason why Goldine should not top twenty million. The only figure she wouldn’t be able to match was the $25,000 Schick had offered Spitz to shave off his mustache on TV. To compensate for that, she would have the edge in the lucrative cosmetics, fashion and domestic goods markets.

It was like surfing: you caught the wave at its high point and hoped it kept rolling all the way in. The timing was crucial. Like it or not, he had to sell the Goldengirl idea to big business in advance of the Olympics. That meant trading on his reputation, pulling every string he knew. The two-million fee he had settled for as payment wouldn’t be easy money.

After lunch he drove out to Bakersfield. On the Golden State Freeway, he did some thinking about Serafin. The theory that he was conning Armitage and the others was out. You didn’t equip an Olympic training camp in the mountains and employ a team of coaches, a psychologist and God knows how many ancillary staff to hoist the kind of money the consortium were putting up. Nothing Dryden had learned from Goldine, the newspapers or the reference books conflicted with the story Serafin had told that first evening at Cambria.